LOW-ENERGY SIGNATURES OF SEMIPERTURBATIVE UNIFICATION

We consider the low-energy signatures of, and high-energy motivations for, scenarios of semiperturbative gauge coupling unification. Such sc enarios can leave striking imprints on the loci-energy sparticle spect rum, including novel gaugino mass ratios (including M-2/M-1 approximat e to 1), substantial compression of the intragenerational squark-to-sl epton mass ratios, and an overall lifting of scalar masses relative to the gauginos. We also demonstrate that the unification scale can be r aised to M-X approximate to 4 x 10(17) GeV while still in the perturba tive regime-close to the one-loop heterotic string scale. We employ a three-loop calculation of the running of the gauge couplings as a test of the perturbativity of the high-scale theory.